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NetApp Unveils Clustered Data ONTAP Innovations that Pave the Way for Software-Defined Storage

NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced a new version of its flagship storage operating system – clustered Data ONTAP®. The new software gives organizations and cloud service providers the capability to rapidly and cost effectively deliver new services and capacity with maximum application uptime. Clustered Data ONTAP 8.2 cuts through the performance, availability, and efficiency limits of traditional hardware silos, empowering IT to nondisruptively align the storage infrastructure with changing business and application demands.

Seamless scalability with up to 69PB of storage and 24 controller nodes, 49,000 LUNs, 12,000 NAS volumes supporting over 100,000 clients and single container up to 20 PB

Proven storage and operational efficiency within a unified and multi-tenant architecture that meets the needs of enterprises, small, and midsized businesses

Additional key features and enhancements:

Granular quality of service (QoS) to meet application performance service levels in multi-tenant and multi-workload environments for SAN and NAS

NetApp® SnapVault® disk-to-disk (D2D) backup: compression, and deduplication savings are preserved over the network and restores of PB-scale datasets, applications, and virtual machines (VMs) are instantly available

Automation and monitoring enhancements for the NetApp OnCommand® Management Suite

NetApp’s Vision for Software-Defined Storage

Software-defined storage (SDS) is one component of the emerging software-defined data center (SDDC) model, which focuses on agility in delivering IT services to application owners while improving operational and IT resource efficiency. Akin to virtual machines and server virtualization, clustered Data ONTAP abstracts physical storage into a set of Storage Virtual Machines (SVM; formerly known as vServer). This allows NetApp to deliver native multi-tenant, policy-based storage services via programmable APIs and application integrations. Clustered Data ONTAP is the first storage and data management solution that makes the promise of SDS attainable today PDF.

“CIOs are moving from builders of applications and operators of data centers to brokers of information services to the business,” said Jay Kidd, senior vice president and chief technology officer, NetApp. “This new role requires technologies that can speed IT response time and drive operational and resource efficiency. Clustered Data ONTAP fills this need today, providing the key building block that delivers the benefits of software-defined storage models and will replace existing slow and inefficient siloed approaches. Our new software gives IT unsurpassed agility, including the flexibility to deploy across multiple platforms.”

Quality of service and data protection enhancements help IT to automate application provisioning based on service level and to realize operational benefits from pre-set policy-based security and delegation. These features and capabilities enable IT teams to scale infrastructure to fit business needs, decrease the cost to run applications, and achieve higher levels of operational efficiency.

Customer Momentum with Clustered Data ONTAP

Clustered Data ONTAP offers compelling value to both the enterprise private cloud and public cloud service providers. The software’s unified architecture services a range of workloads–from the most demanding to the most unique across virtualized environments, scale-out NAS, and enterprise applications. During the past year companies across all industries have adopted clustered Data ONTAP with a 4x increase in clustered nodes resulting in 100% quarter over quarter growth of deployments. Cloud providers, whose business reputation depends on continuously running operations, are bringing centralized management to the data center with FlexPod® from NetApp and Cisco with clustered Data ONTAP.

Areas of high adoption of clustered Data ONTAP include:

Virtualized environments. Organizations use private clouds to consolidate multiple applications into a shared environment, so IT is delivered like a service provider. Clustered Data ONTAP's unified architecture services a broad range of workloads on a standard platform.

Scale-out NAS. Traditionally, NAS has been used to meet the requirements for storing files on a network for access by a few or for backup purposes. With clustered Data ONTAP, customers can grow from a few terabytes to tens of petabytes without reconfiguring running applications.

Enterprise applications. As IT becomes integral to business operations, the impact of downtime on tier 1 applications negatively affects budgets and productivity. Clustered Data ONTAP improves service levels over the lifecycle of an application with the ability to dynamically assign, promote and retire storage resources.

Clustered Data ONTAP continues to deliver up to 50% greater storage efficiency than non NetApp environments. The software also delivers greater than 99.999% availability as reported by AutoSupport™, NetApp’s global remote automation and predictive guidance solution which leverages an intelligent data analytics engine to identify at risk systems. Clustered Data ONTAP innovations are protected by more than 1,500 U.S. and international patents and patent applications.

Customer Successes Fueled by Clustered Data ONTAP

Dominion Enterprises. Dominion Enterprises, a media and information services company, maintains websites for 40 market-leading websites with a total of more than 20 million unique monthly visitors. Each of Dominion’s customers requires complex data storage infrastructure that support both SAN and NAS workloads. With clustered Data ONTAP, Dominion can easily move huge volumes of data—photos, videos, and other content—independent of the underlying hardware, allowing the IT team to segregate businesses, create different storage tiers, and promote or demote volumes, all transparent within a single namespace.

Cirrity: Clustered Data ONTAP is ideal for service providers consolidating multiple applications onto a shared environment. NetApp Customer Cirrity, a leading cloud service provider for regulated industries such as healthcare, provides a backbone for its managed service provider customers, making time to service critical workloads unpredictable, and workload isolation paramount. They start up hundreds of virtual machines a week, and balance the workload across the cluster. Clustered Data ONTAP allows Cirrity to get customers up and running in a few hours and guarantee 100% uptime.

New End-to-End Services Offerings for Clustered Data ONTAP

NetApp unveiled new and refreshed services, available from NetApp and its partners that help customers realize the benefits of clustered Data ONTAP faster and increase the return on their storage investments. With NetApp clustered Data ONTAP services, businesses can align IT to their strategic goals, deploy validated architectures, accelerate their path to non-disruptive operations, and achieve high levels of operational excellence. To learn more visit NetApp’s Services and Support website.

As part of today’s announcement, NetApp also announced the general availability of Flash Cache™ 2 controller-attached PCIe intelligent caching modules, which increase flash module capacity by 100%, to 2TB, compared to previous generations. The new flash technology, based on NetApp’s patented and patent-pending flash expertise, boosts performance for workloads that are random read intensive, such as file services, messaging, OLTP databases, and server and desktop virtualization.

Supporting Quotes:

Industry Analyst Quote

Terri McClure, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group

“IT is under tremendous pressure to adapt in order to combat the challenge of today's massive data growth while meeting expectations for fast response times to adapt to new business requirements. Business are seeking storage infrastructure solutions that deliver agility and availability, that ensure the fast provisioning of underlying IT services to keep applications up and running as well as bring new applications on board quickly. And doing so in a manner that ensures applications can coexist in the same infrastructure without the worry of a rogue application taking resources from business critical ones. With clustered Data ONTAP, NetApp is virtualizing the underlying storage infrastructure in such a way as to enable this type of flexible and efficient services-oriented data storage infrastructure.”

Customer Quotes

Dan Timko, President and CTO, Cirrity

“Business continuity is critical to our reputation. The ability to operate in clustered Data ONTAP means we can move data from storage system to storage system for maintenance or other activities without affecting users. There is also significant advantage in seamlessly adding NetApp systems as needed without having to buy big metal up front.”

Tom Skidmore, Chief Architect, Dominion Enterprises

“We have to offer always on-operations, but still need the flexibility to add or move storage to address business requirements, such as migrating data from super high-performance, performance, or value-based disk storage. Migrating customers on and off storage for replacements or upgrades was historically a huge friction point and a costly process. Clustered Data ONTAP has resulted in greater operational agility, fewer data migrations, and far less overhead.”

Rob Gee, Data Center Solutions Architect, Logicalis

“Storage efficiency, nondisruptive operations, and scalability all provide the foundation for cost-effective cloud services for our customers, making clustered Data ONTAP technology a critical part of the Logicalis cloud offering. Our technology collaboration with NetApp provides efficient private and public cloud solutions that enable our customers to start with a smaller investment and seamlessly scale as their business requires, with no interruption in their operations.”

Akihiro Matsukura, Managing Director, TOKAI Communications

“It is crucial for organizations today to respond quickly to diversifying data-management needs in the era of the cloud. With clustered Data ONTAP – and its scale-out architecture, high scalability, and non-disruptive operations – TOKAI Communications continues to provide high quality, value-added services for our customers. NetApp’s new release of clustered Data ONTAP will bring significant benefits to the data management solution market and business impact to organizations.”

Robin Schöpe, Storage Engineer, Ultra Consulting Network GmbH

“IT agility is a conversation we frequently have with our customers. The challenge is how to make it real given the constraints business puts on IT today. Clustered Data ONTAP software combined with our ability to deliver and support advanced IT consulting, provides our customers with a proven solution to make nondisruptive operations a reality and adapt to ever-changing market needs."

Alliance Technology Partner Quotes

Satinder Sethi, Vice President, Data Center Solutions, Cisco

“With the release of clustered Data ONTAP 8.2, NetApp continues its heritage of innovation with Data ONTAP. Cisco continues to expand our joint solutions built upon the Cisco Unified Computing System and Nexus 5500 Unified Fabric product families. We are pleased with the ongoing success of FlexPod and other Cisco-NetApp deployment options.”

Sanjay Katyal, Vice President, Global Alliances and OEMs, VMware

“VMware and NetApp's technology partnership enables our joint customers to increase the agility of their IT infrastructure using seamlessly integrated storage within a software-defined data center. NetApp's clustered Data ONTAP with VMware vCloud® Suite and VMware Horizon™ Suite enables on-demand access to storage resources, along with quality of service and security isolation in a shared infrastructure environment, helping customers increase operational efficiency and reduce infrastructure costs for their private cloud environments.”

About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions that deliver outstanding cost efficiency and accelerate business breakthroughs. Our commitment to living our core values, our renown tradition of innovation, and consistently being recognized as a great place to work around the world are fundamental to our long-term growth and success, as well as the success of our pathway partners and customers. Discover our passion for helping companies around the world go further, faster at www.netapp.com.

NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further, faster, Data ONTAP and Flash Cache, are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. Use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership between NetApp and any other company.

Supporting Quotes Sheet

Technology Alliance Partners

Calvin Hsu, vice president, Product Marketing, Desktops and Apps, Citrix
“Mobile workstyles are forcing businesses to rethink how they deliver IT services to their users. At the heart of this transformation is the delivery of virtualized apps and desktops to users in any location. With the NetApp announcement of clustered Data ONTAP 8.2, and the recently announced XenDesktop 7, Citrix and NetApp are working together to help enterprises mobilize their employees with access to apps, desktops, and data anywhere and on any device they choose.”

Jeff Bellamy, senior director, Technology and ISV Alliances, F5
“NetApp and F5 are both focused on making IT systems more intelligent and resilient. Clustered Data ONTAP 8.2 is an ideal fit for organizations looking to efficiently deploy new services, guarantee availability, and scale storage resources to support evolving business needs. As a complement to NetApp’s offerings, F5’s flexible solutions bring enhanced programmability to application delivery, bolstering business continuity, and promoting software-defined datacenter models.”

Bruce Backa, CEO, NTP Software
“Over the past 12 years, we’ve worked with NetApp to help manage customers’ data through a comprehensive suite of products that deliver storage efficiency. Today’s announcement of NetApp clustered Data ONTAP 8.2 will revolutionize the way enterprises approach their virtualized storage environments. We look forward to continuing our partnership with NetApp to help customers achieve nondisruptive operations, while working with them and others to migrate to the new platform so that they can take full advantage of their data and business insights.”

Jim Totton, vice president and general manager, Platform, Red Hat
"Together, Red Hat and NetApp offer industry-leading performance, scalability and efficiency to organizations looking to realize the full value of open source in their business. NetApp helped lead development for parallel NFS technology and has delivered the server component for the first standards-based, end-to-end pNFS solution for higher performing, more predictable storage environments. This latest version of clustered Data ONTAP paired with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux pNFS client with direct I/O exemplifies how our work in the open source community accelerates technology innovation.”

Yaki Faitelson, CEO, president, and co-founder, Varonis
“Together, NetApp and Varonis are working to tackle the data growth challenge. NetApp is a leading storage platform for human-generated unstructured data, and Varonis provides the metadata layer that addresses the governance, access, and retention requirements for this critical information. With today’s announcement, NetApp’s clustered Data ONTAP 8.2 provides the non-disruptive operations, proven efficiency, and seamless scalability that organizations need to achieve their business objectives.”

NetApp Distributors and Resellers

Mike Davis, CEO, ACS
“NetApp is the number one choice our customers select when their business needs require storage innovation. Today’s announcement of clustered Data ONTAP 8.2 will help our customers enable their business and storage needs seamlessly.”

Mark Teter, CTO, Advanced Systems Group (ASG)
“The launch of clustered Data ONTAP 8.2 will allow us to provide our customers with a next-generation storage solution. It will also allow our customers to support a virtualized, shared, and dynamic IT environment with on-demand flexibility and complete non-disruptive operations. With NetApp’s policy-based orchestration, IT finally has a services-driven storage infrastructure.”

Shawn O’Grady, executive vice president, Field Operations, Datalink
“From greater scalability to increased agility, NetApp clustered Data ONTAP 8.2 offers a number of compelling benefits to mid- and large-size organizations. Helping organizations maximize the business benefits of IT is central to what Datalink does. Our deep expertise of NetApp solutions and portfolio of implementation and migration services will help organizations streamline the transition to NetApp clustered Data ONTAP 8.2 and realize the full value of what the solution has to offer.”

John Woodall, vice president, Engineering, Integrated Archive Systems
“NetApp yet again sets the bar for storage innovation with clustered Data ONTAP 8.2. Customers have realized the value of virtualized, clustered infrastructure for the past several years. With clustered Data ONTAP 8.2, IAS and NetApp can provide customers with the equivalent of a server hypervisor at the storage layer which grants the proven business and technical value of a clustered, highly-available, and standardized infrastructure. This more agile and robust infrastructure allows customers to seamlessly respond to business changes as they happen.”

Todd Gallina, vice president, Marketing, Trace3
"Storage efficiency and business growth are top of mind for Trace3 customers. That is why our customers can always count on NetApp to deliver storage solutions to maximize the efficiency of their rapidly growing data. With the launch of NetApp clustered Data ONTAP 8.2, the issue of non-scalable infrastructures are a thing of the past - replaced with the ability to deploy infrastructure that supports rapid business growth, successfully."